


Inappropriate Charms

by Elfwreck



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Goats, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-18
Updated: 2010-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 03:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/pseuds/Elfwreck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aberforth had always been fond of goats. Goats were <em>special</em>.</p><p><strong>Alternate Summary</strong>: "My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No he did not! He held his head up high and went about business as usual! Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inappropriate Charms

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by nothing in particular; these are the kind of thoughts I get up to when nothing is pushing me. Wonderful beta help &amp; handholding from legionseagle, jumpuphigh, &amp; flamewarrior.

The goat is the least magical creature that ever lived. Everyone knew that. Goats are dull, banal, and irritating. They eat rubbish and shed rough hair on everything. They're stubborn and bad-tempered and rude. And unmagical. Very, very unmagical.

Except for the bezoars.

Every once in a while, the wholly unmagical goat will eat something just wrong, or brush against the wrong bush, or drink water from the wrong pool -- never anything magical or predictable, all the books agreed on that -- and produce a cyst capable of nullifying the most intense magical poisons. Goats are anti-magic. They absorb magic and destroy it. And the destruction of magic is, in itself, a magical act.

Aberforth knew there was something special about goats. They can't make bezoars, he reasoned, without _some_ kind of magic. Some twist of the aura, some resonance of the soul, must give them the ability to manipulate--to nullify--magic. Especially toxic magic. And he was going to learn how it worked.

He studied goats for years. He read about them, built models of their skeletons, wore goatskin clothes, learned every potion that involved goat horn or hoof or teeth or fur. There weren't many. Goats and magic do not mix well.

Neither do goats and wizards. Aberforth spent his teen years acquiring bruises from goats. He tried to be gentle with them, for a long time, before he understood that goats don't want gentle. Gentle is wasted on goats. Grab them by the horns, he learned, yank their heads around, and yell at them. Drag them around by the fur at the back of the neck -- grab _hard_, because if they decide to run off, you'll need a firm grip to stop them. And maybe a Jelly-Legs Jinx. Which won't work sometimes, because goats are magic sinks; it takes three times as much power to affect a goat as a horse.

His research, if that's what it was, had results. He learned to make bezoars. He wondered how many other wizards through the ages had done this, and not told anyone. He started wondering how many other lies he'd been told, and how many other secrets were held in the private labs of reclusive wizards. _He_ certainly wasn't sharing what he'd found out.

Goats are immune to Imperius. And Cruciatus. He wasn't willing to find out if they were immune to the other one, but he had his suspicions; why else would those three spells be forbidden as no others? And the right combination of _Imperio_ and _Crucio_, timed the right way (_Imperio_! two- three- four- five- _Crucio_! two- three- _Crucio_! two- three- _Imperio_! _Crucio_! two- three- four- five- six- seven- eight- nine- ten, all the way up to twenty-four, _Crucio_! _Imperio_! _Crucio_! fast, snap-snap-snap) and that goat would have a bezoar in its stomach the next morning, which could be harvested the old-fashioned way (kill the goat) or by more careful surgery. It couldn't be harvested by magic; casting a spell to get it out interfered with the goat's metabolism and ruined the bezoar.

He knew what would happen if he got caught. Azkaban for sure, even though nobody had been hurt. And nobody knew how he got the bezoars; everyone figured he just had a way of spotting which goats would produce them. He refused to discuss goats with his fellow wizards. Pack of power-hungry braggarts, the lot of them, and his brother the worst, mooning over that Continental invert.

Not that he minded inverts. He minded the self-congratulatory way Albert and Gelert acted together, blithely apportioning value to people according to their magical talents. Hah. Well, goats had no magical talents, but they were pretty damn valuable to wizards.

For a long time, he didn't get caught. Nobody at Hogwarts cared what a young wizard got up to with goats. They snickered, sometimes, wondering about him; he knew what they said. He didn't care. Wasn't his job to explain to them that not all obsessions involve sexual perversion. And he figured if they thought he was that kind of bent, they wouldn't pay too close attention to what else he was doing.

He was wrong about that part. Turns out, the Ministry keeps a close eye on wizards who get too close to goats. He thought, at first, it was because of the bezoars, and how he'd learned to make them; he was mistaken. They didn't care a damn bit about using Unforgiveables on goats.

They cared about feeding bezoars to young witches, though. Especially if combined with certain spells. (Not Unforgiveables; Aberforth could never bring himself to cast anything harmful on his sister. Years later, he was never sure if that recalcitrance sealed his failure.) They cared quite a bit, it turned out. But they were so disturbed by the whole affair they could barely discuss it, and they wouldn't imprison him -- too much attention. Prisoners on their way to Azkaban got public, or at least publicized, trials, and the charges were published in the Daily Prophet.

The charges were officially "inappropriate charms on a goat." That was all they were willing to put on paper. He was lectured at length by the Minister, his assistant, and his own brother, for his "vile, disgusting, abnormal, warped desires," until he was almost ready to marry the damn goat; that would've bothered them less.

Bezoars absorb some magics. They absorb a lot more than poisons; it's hard to break them magically. Other spells don't bounce off them; they get sucked in and do nothing. Just like spells cast on goats. He wanted to make a bezoar work a little like a live goat. Absorb magic, and _keep_ absorbing it. If he could make one that worked constantly, instead of just once, Ariana could be _whole_. A squib, effectively, but sane and healthy. Her magic would stop leaking out all over the place; she'd be able to laugh or cry without the windows breaking; she wouldn't float off in the middle of conversations. Her bedclothes would stop trying to strangle her in her sleep.

He fed Ariana goat's milk for months before anyone noticed. He was honestly shocked when he was arrested (although, in hindsight, he shouldn't have been; he'd quite naively forgotten how many wizards thought squibs were non-human, evolutionary throwbacks), and he was led away, saying "But I'm so _close_! This will work, I know it!"

It looked damning, he knew. He was stripped down to his underclothes; working with goats was messy. Ariana was sucking on a bezoar he'd harvested from a female goat, and lying down next to that goat so Aberforth could milk it directly into her mouth, around the bezoar. He was draped over the back of the goat; it was the only way he could get it to hold still enough. The goat had another bezoar inside, made yesterday, not yet harvested.

He had hoped that the resonance between the two, and the milk, would create some kind of connection between them, that when he cast a fast series of charms on the goat-- the kind he knew they were immune to -- it would somehow "overfill" the bezoar inside, and create a backlash into the bezoar in Ariana's mouth, connecting its magic to the goat's living energy and nullifying the toxic magic that filled her

He tugged on the goat's teat, sending a stream of milk into Ariana's mouth, and the moment it touched the bezoar, he cast a Stinging Hex on the goat. Flicker of light around the stream of milk, and Ari's eyes grew wide. The soft glow that flickered constantly through her hair faded. It was working! But as soon as the stream of milk stopped, the glow returned.

"Twy sungtheh har'er," she mumbled around the bezoar.

Aberforth pulled again, and as the milk touched her mouth, and cast Flagrate, sending a line of fire across the goat's head. The goat bleated at that; fire spells usually bothered them even if they could shake them off.

The light around Ari's head went out, and she smiled widely at him.

She rolled away from the goat and stood up—and the light stayed out. She clapped her hands, and said, around the bezoar, "I fee' so _ligh'_!" Aberforth grinned at her, and started to get off the goat, but then she frowned. The tiny lights flickered through her hair again.

"Ngoo!" she wailed. "Ngooooo! Ngake i' skok!" She started to claw at her head, tear at her hair, and Aberforth leaped up and grabbed her, held her, rocked her back and forth and murmured to her.

"We'll make it work, Ari. I promise. It's working. Just a few more tries, and we'll figure out how to make it last. We'll make the magic go away and leave you alone. We will." He kept talking, whispering to her, telling her how much better it would be, until she calmed down again.

She laid down again, next to the goat. Aberforth could see the tracks of her tears through the dust on her face, but she was resolute. Or at least as calm as she ever got, these days; the magic almost never stopped moving through her and around her.

He settled himself over the back of the goat, petting it and holding it still, and reached around to the other teat, and started milking it into Ariana's mouth. He cast hex after hex: stinging, blinding, freezing, jelly-legs, tickling, flaming tongue, floating, sinking, coughing… the stream of milk glowed with each tug, and Ari didn't, and he knew they were close, so _close_. He was almost ready to try Cruciatus on the goat, but he didn't know if any of the magic itself was transferred with the milk -- the colour of the glow changed with each hex -- or just the bezoar's nullifying power. He couldn't bear to hurt her, and he hesitated before using such a powerful and potentially dangerous spell where it might affect her.

And then the Aurors broke into the barn.

Three of them, wands out and ready, outrage on their faces. One wand pointed at him. One at Ari, which was ridiculous; she was harmless. One at the goat, which, if he were less surprised, he'd've laughed about.

The Auror facing him used Levicorpus to lift him away from the goat, and that was the end of his experimenting with bezoars. The next three days were a blur of lectures and threats. They went on about how he'd tried to "defile" his sister, like he was ruining her, not saving her from a curse. They talked a lot about a wizard or witch's "essential nature," and how it was so different from a Muggle's, and how a witch's magic was her only defense against the tribulations that beset Muggle and squib women.

Aberforth spent a lot of time with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Albus pleaded with him to understand, how Ari was special, how dare he try to take away the only thing she had left -- like her life would be meaningless without magic. Aberforth remembered how she smiled when the glow around her faded, and glared at his brother.

In the end, they confiscated his wand for two months, which he was sure they considered a grave punishment, took away every bezoar they could find, and sold off the goats. Imposed a three-year injunction against him owning any goats or spending any time around them, and Albus agreed to enforce it.

It didn't matter. Ariana didn't last long after that. Taking away her hope of a normal life took away her control; she was just too tired to keep fighting the magic anymore.

At her funeral, Aberforth broke his brother's nose. And for the rest of his life, he would tell people that he preferred the company of goats to that of wizards, and to hell with what they thought of him for that.


End file.
